All-Day Kindergarten

Sometimes when you start a sentence, “Only in Arizona,” it’s for a laugh. Sometimes, it’s for a cry. This time, it’s an all-out wail, as in: Only in Arizona would we still be debating if all-day kindergarten is a good thing. Only in Arizona would we have legislators who seriously contend that money for early childhood education is a waste. Only in Arizona would we have lawmakers so mean they’d distort the research on the value of all-day kindergarten. Only in Arizona would elected officials dare to ignore dozens of studies proving the obvious – that all-day kindergarten gives kids an enormous leap forward. Only in Arizona would we be wasting so much time and effort on the ideological mules in the statehouse who don’t want to spend any more money on early education. And only in Arizona would some citizens argue that all-day kindergarten is just “all-day babysitting.”

While states like Florida have decided “high quality” preschool for all 4-year-olds is so important, they’ve enshrined it in their state constitution, and while states like Georgia have mandated that school districts offer all-day kindergarten since 1985, it took Governor Janet Napolitano to finally make this an issue here. Until she started her push last year, this issue wasn’t even on the state’s agenda.

I remember bragging to a friend from the Midwest that our governor was kickin’ butts and takin’ names to institute all-day kindergarten, and my friend looked at me like I was his backwoods sister, and said, “Honey, we did that years ago. The issue now is how much earlier can we get kids into educational programs.”

OK, so even if the governor pulls off the expansion of her all-day kindergarten dreams this year, we’ll still be far behind, but what’s new – this state has never led in anything except the embarrassing side of the ledger (last in education spending, first in teen suicide, second in domestic violence deaths… it’s a long list).

So, I started looking into what’s going on, and, frankly, what I found is a new low in dirty politics.

The spokesman for the chorus of “all-day kindergarten is not worth the investment” is state Senator John Huppenthal (R-Chandler).

In a point-counterpoint debate on the editorial pages of The Arizona Republic last November, Senator Huppenthal cited a national study to suggest that “all-day kindergarten students suffer from lower academic motivation, lower teamwork skills and great anti-social behavior at the end of kindergarten. At the end of third grade, all-day kindergarten students achieve lower academic gains in reading and math.”

His conclusion was this: “One of the best education studies ever done says that we will spend more than $200 million per year on all-day kindergarten and get less than nothing in return, even losing ground to other states.”

I remember reading those words and thinking, “Huh????”

I’ve been writing about education since I began my journalism career in Michigan nearly 40 years ago. I’ve read a mountain of studies that underscore the importance of early childhood education in general, and all-day kindergarten in particular. Senator Huppenthal claims that all those studies were bogus. “The research presented by the governor to justify all-day kindergarten was not credible,” he declared in what appears to be a growing mantra (watch any issue and you’ll invariably hear one side claim that the other side is either “not credible” or has been “discredited,” demanding you take their word for it).

Do you ever get a feeling in the pit of your stomach that something isn’t quite right? Well, that’s the feeling I got as I read Senator Huppenthal’s strange thesis. I certainly wasn’t ready to take his word for it, since it contradicted everything I knew about the subject. As I’ve learned over all these years of sticking my nose in other people’s business, when something smells wrong, there’s usually a pile of crap somewhere. The best place to look, I’ve discovered, is at the beginning – at that national education study on which the East Valley senator places such incredible stock.

I went to the internet to find the original study, and found it within seconds. You can do this yourself – do a search for “Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.” Yes, it’s an important study, done by the National Center for Education Statistics, the primary federal entity for collecting, analyzing and reporting information on education in the United States and other nations.

This longitudinal study looks at the kindergarten class of 1998-1999, when it reports that 54 percent of public school kindergarteners and 67 percent of private school kindergarteners attended an all-day program. (Hmmm… I thought. Private schools, where better-off and religion-based kids go, have a significantly higher number of all-day kindergarteners. Shouldn’t that give us a clue about how valuable all-day kindergarten is?)

Released in June 2004, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study says this: “Overall, the results presented in this report support previous research on full-day kindergarten and its positive association with learning in reading and mathematics during the kindergarten year.”

Somehow, I couldn’t read those words and hear an indictment that all-day kindergarten was a waste of money. But maybe I just needed to read some more.

So I did.

And I found this: “Children gained an average of 81 points in reading and 63 points in mathematics from the beginning of kindergarten to the end of third grade.” When I asked an expert what those numbers meant, he said “That’s a lot of learning.”

I couldn’t find Senator Huppenthal’s charge that the study found that kids suffer “lower academic motivation,” but I did find a conclusion that says the opposite: “On average, children’s scores on the reading, mathematics and general school scales were high, indicating that they were generally interested in and enjoyed school.”

I couldn’t find anything in the report to support Senator Huppenthal’s contention that all-day kindergarten lowers teamwork and increases anti-social behavior, but I did find another contradictory conclusion: “On average, children responded positively on the peer-relationship scale, indicating that they generally made friends easily and got along well with their peers.”

By now, I was double-checking that I was reading the same study Senator Huppenthal was quoting, because, boy, I sure couldn’t find any validation for his complaints.

But I wanted to be sure, so I emailed the research director of the study, Dr. Jerry West. He works in Washington, D.C., and he nicely e-mailed right back, giving me his office phone number. So I called. He seemed like a very nice – and very polite – man who truly believes his job is to gather the information and present it fairly, letting others do the policy debating.

Dr. West told me I wasn’t the first one to call him about Senator Huppenthal’s interpretation of his data. In fact, “several” had already come knocking at his door.

Dr. West had no intention of commenting on Senator Huppenthal’s interpretation – that alone raises a flag, because if the Senator were on track, there’d be no reason to hedge. But hedge is exactly what Dr. West did, admitting, “We went back to find where” the Senator had come up with these decisions.

Or, as Dr. West puts it in an e-mail he’s sent to those who have been calling, “While it is difficult to identify exactly the sources of the findings that Senator Huppenthal cities in his article….”

I wanted to be sure I had it straight. The guy who directed the study finds it difficult to determine how somebody concluded all-day kindergarten was worthless?

When I put it that way to Dr. West, he sidestepped again, referring me to the specific studies he conducted. One is the all-day study I’d already read, and when I told him I couldn’t find those dire conclusions, he did acknowledge that the study “does show an advantage” to all-day kindergarten.

OK, so Senator Huppenthal is wrong about that one.

Dr. West also cited a report from kindergarten through third grade, but he says the report clearly cautions readers on interpreting the data. “We are pretty conservative about our statistics, so pay attention to our cautions,” Dr. West said.

Does the advantage of all-day kindergarten persist over time? I asked him. “It is too early to conclude,” Dr. West answered.

But Senator Huppenthal has concluded exactly that from the very study Dr. West conducted. So, he was wrong on that one, too.

I also noted that Senator Huppenthal had said the governor’s studies to support the benefits of all-day kindergarten were “not credible.” And here’s how Dr. West responded: “We cite most of those other studies in our report.”

Hello! Senator Huppenthal, looks like you’re the one who’s not credible here.

According to government insiders, “He’s been distorting that study from the start,” to bolster those who have decided they do not want all-day kindergarten in our state. When asked what motivates this decision, here’s what I was told from several sources:

• They are anti-government; some don’t support public education at all, and certainly don’t think it deserves any more dollars. (Ironically, many of these same lawmakers are the loudest drumbeaters for charter schools, which use public money for private schools, including religious schools.)
• They think children need to be at home with their mothers, who are at home where they belong. (Besides reverting to 1950s thinking, this is the crowd that uses the term “babysitting” a lot.)
• They oppose anything supported by a Democrat in general, and Governor Napolitano in particular.
• And some of these lawmakers are just “True Believers: Only God and I can decide what others need.”

Senator Huppenthal suggests that instead of spending $200 million a year on all-day kindergarten, the state would be better to put that money elsewhere to help provide thousands of jobs in the private sector.

If that’s the case, then why is the Arizona business community such a strong supporter of all-day kindergarten? In fact, it was the business sector that first requested this become a top priority on the state’s agenda.

Jim Zaharis, vice president for education at the Greater Phoenix Leadership, says his business group has been supporting the education agenda for the last four years.

He makes the case clearly, simply and poignantly: “We believe that education is critically linked to the workforce and economic climate of our state.

“We believe that a significant place to improve that educational pipeline is at the front end.

“Arizona has a wide discrepancy in skills among our children who enter kindergarten. It is our business leaders’ belief that if we could level the playing field for many of those children, with a quality, academic all-day kindergarten, that more of our children would become fully literate by the end of third grade, and thereby be able to take advantage of their education through high school.

“We believe that the development of the human talent of our people is critical to the quality of life for our state’s future.”

Now, that is believable. That is trustworthy. And that is honest.

Too bad we can’t get the opponents of all-day kindergarten to present their case the same way.